Doug Lea, an academic-independent and a former JCP Executive Committee member, released on Friday an open letter to his colleagues and the Java community explaining why he will be no longer seeking another Executive Committee term. "I believe that the JCP is no longer a credible specification and standards body, and there is no remaining useful role for an independent advocate for the academic and research community on the EC."

As companies like SpringSource and Google forge quickly ahead in API releases and product collaborations, important projects that sit within the Java Community Process (JCP) space seem to suffer stagnation. A common point of contention for James Gosling before his departure from Oracle, the JCP has taken another high-profile blow as a long standing member and advocate expresses his disillusionment with the process.

"Some have argued that JCP was never a credible standards body. I once disagreed: Sun initially placed in the JSPA and Process documents enough rules to ensure that the JCP could foster innovation, quality, and diversity, independent of that from Sun, with few enough (albeit annoying) exceptions to allow JCP to drive consensual progress more successfully than seen in most standards bodies. However, some of these rules, and violations of rules, have been found to be the source of stalemates and lost technical ground. Rather than fixing rules or ceasing violations, Oracle now promises to simply disregard them." Says Doug Lea in his open letter to the community.

As companies like SpringSource and Google forge quickly ahead in API releases and product collaborations, important projects that sit within the Java Community Process (JCP) space seem to suffer stagnation.

Its funny how this is being spun. SpringSource and Google were some of the biggest, filibustering, obstacles for getting CDI to be a part of Java EE 6. It always baffled my mind that these two companies were given so much say on a set of specifications they have never nor will ever implement. Initially I thought getting SpringSource to be a part of the JCP EC would entice them to bring some of their products to the standardization process like we did with Hibernate and Seam. Instead their goal was to block any innovation from happening in Java EE to protect their little fiefdom.

I really haven't been involved with the JCP since the EE5/EJB3 days, but back then Oracle was actually a very good ally. They have some good people over there that recognize innovation and want to move the Java EE platform forward. Whether or not they will have say over the Oracle business people remains to be seen IMO.

As far as Doug goes, its a big loss. I know a few of my JBoss colleagues enjoyed working with him. Personally, I think his departure was premature. I don't think the dust has settled yet after the Sun acquisition. All Java JCP major participants knew that the JCP had to change. We wanted change. We still have to give Oracle the benefit of the doubt and, more importantly, time. Time to get organized. Acquisitions take time to settle (believe me I know). From what I've seen, Oracle had in the past always been an innovator supportor on the EE specification process. I don't see why this couldn't continue.

"This allowed Hibernate to flourish and practically become a de facto standard."

Dude, you got it wrong by two years, at which point it was already a de facto standard.

Isn't that what I said? I was saying that because of Java EE's persistence incompetence (EJB 1, 1.1, 2.x BMP/CMP), Hibernate almost became a de facto standard. Even when Gavin joined JBoss in 2003, a lot of our customers/users were still using CMP (you could probably say the same for Websphere and WLS). When it was announced and explained in the community that JPA would be a part of EJB3, Hibernate downloads received a huge spike. What people were telling us was that they saw Hibernate as a migration path from EJB 2.x to EJB3/JPA. So, you're really not going to convince me that the JCP/JPA wasn't benefitial to Hibernate adoption.

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